From 22c3bfee9148e1836817ef00b4829a8385570c69 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christian Grothoff Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2022 17:04:26 +0200 Subject: update RMS articles --- .../blog/articles/en/free-hardware-designs.html | 123 +++++++++++++-------- 1 file changed, 74 insertions(+), 49 deletions(-) (limited to 'talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/free-hardware-designs.html') diff --git a/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/free-hardware-designs.html b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/free-hardware-designs.html index 9e862ea..3887189 100644 --- a/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/free-hardware-designs.html +++ b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/free-hardware-designs.html @@ -1,24 +1,27 @@ - + + + + Free Hardware and Free Hardware Designs - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation + + + +

Free Hardware and Free Hardware Designs

-

by Richard M. Stallman

- - -
-

Most of this article was published in two parts in Wired in -March 2015.

-
+
by Richard +Stallman
+

To what extent do the ideas of free software extend to hardware? Is it a moral obligation to make our hardware designs free, just as it is to make our software free? Does maintaining our freedom require rejecting hardware made from nonfree designs?

+

Definitions

@@ -53,7 +56,7 @@ means you can get a copy gratis. Many free programs are available for zero price, since it costs you nothing to download your own copy, but that's not what “free” means here. (In fact, some spyware programs such as Flash +href="/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.html">Flash Player and Angry Birds are gratis although they are not free.) Saying “libre” along with “free” helps clarify the point.

@@ -69,7 +72,7 @@ denies freedom to its users is worth less than nothing.

We can use the term “libre hardware” as a concise equivalent for “hardware made from a free (libre) -design”.

+design.”

The terms “open hardware” and “open source hardware” are used by some with the same concrete meaning as @@ -113,10 +116,22 @@ consequences.

There is a gray area between hardware and software that contains firmware that can be upgraded or replaced, but is not meant -ever to be upgraded or replaced once the product is sold. In -conceptual terms, the gray area is rather narrow. In practice, it is -important because many products fall in it. We can treat that -firmware as hardware with a small stretch.

+ever to be upgraded or replaced once the product is sold. Or perhaps +it is possible but unusual, or the manufacturer can release a +replacement but you can't. In conceptual terms, the gray area is +rather narrow. In practice, it is important because many products +fall in it. Indeed, nowadays keyboards, cameras, disk drives and USB +memories typically contain an embedded nonfree program that could be +replaced by the manufacturer.

+ +

We can treat that firmware as hardware with a small stretch, but we +must not try to have it both ways. If we treat certain firmware as +impossible to change, since it is not realistically possible to avoid +that firmware, we must also treat it as impossible to change when we +might wish it could be changed. That entails refusing all upgrades or +patches to that firmware. That is what I do, and this is the reason I +do it. Until we can get computers with entirely free firmware, there +is no feasible way to do better than this.

Some have said that preinstalled firmware programs and Field-Programmable Gate Array chips (FPGAs) “blur the boundary @@ -135,8 +150,9 @@ gate pattern file that gets loaded into the FPGA is secret. For many years there was no model of FPGA for which those files could be produced without nonfree (proprietary) tools.

-

As of 2015, free software tools are available for -programming the Lattice +

As of 2015, free software tools are available for +programming the Lattice iCE40, a common model of FPGA, from input written in a hardware description language (HDL). It is also possible to compile C programs and run them on the Xilinx Spartan 6 LX9 FPGA @@ -167,15 +183,15 @@ program.

Be careful to choose 3D printers that work with exclusively free software; the Free Software Foundation endorses such +href="https://ryf.fsf.org/">endorses such printers. Some 3D printers are made from free hardware designs, but Makerbot's +href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/pulling-back-from-open-source-hardware-makerbot-angers-some-adherents/">Makerbot's hardware designs are nonfree.

Must We Reject Nonfree Digital Hardware?

-

Is a nonfree digital (*) hardware design an +

Is a nonfree digital [1] hardware design an injustice? Must we, for our freedom's sake, reject all digital hardware made from nonfree designs, as we must reject nonfree software?

@@ -213,8 +229,8 @@ computer. Constructing a big circuit is a lot of painstaking work, and that's once you have the circuit board. Fabricating a chip is not feasible for individuals today; only mass production can make them cheap enough. With today's hardware technology, users can't download -and run John H Hacker's modified version of a digital hardware design, -as they could run John S Hacker's modified version of a program. +and run a modified version of a widely used digital hardware design, +as they could run a modified version of a widely used program. Thus, the four freedoms don't give users today collective control over a hardware design as they give users collective control over a program. That's where the reasoning showing that all software must be @@ -242,12 +258,6 @@ software will then apply to nonfree hardware designs too.

That future is years away, at least. In the meantime, there is no need to reject hardware with nonfree designs on principle.

-
- -

* As used here, “digital hardware” includes -hardware with some analog circuits and components in addition to -digital ones.

-

We Need Free Digital Hardware Designs

Although we need not reject digital hardware made from nonfree @@ -323,9 +333,9 @@ ideal future we will want the design be free at all levels. Under present circumstances, just making one level free is a significant advance.

-

However, if a design at one level combines free and nonfree parts -— for example, a “free” HDL circuit that -incorporates proprietary “soft cores” — we must +

However, if a design at one level combines free and nonfree +parts—for example, a “free” HDL circuit that +incorporates proprietary “soft cores”—we must conclude that the design as a whole is nonfree at that level. Likewise for nonfree “wizards” or “macros,” if they specify part of the interconnections of chips or programmably @@ -367,9 +377,9 @@ from the drawing. As far as copyright is concerned, everyone is free to make them and use them (and that's a freedom we need very much). In the US, copyright does not cover the functional aspects that the design describes, but does cover decorative +href="https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap13.html#1301">does cover decorative aspects. When one object has decorative aspects and functional -aspects, you get into tricky ground (*).

+aspects, you get into tricky ground [2].

All this may be true in your country as well, or it may not. Before producing objects commercially or in quantity, you should @@ -384,16 +394,6 @@ common. This is why the term “intellectual property” is pure confusion and should be totally rejected.

-
- -

* An article by Public Knowledge gives useful information -about this -complexity, for the US, though it falls into the common mistake of -using the bogus concept of “intellectual property” and the -propaganda term “protection.”

-

Promoting Free Hardware Designs Through Repositories

The most effective way to push for published hardware designs to be @@ -419,7 +419,7 @@ or any of the CC licenses.

The repository should require all designs to be published as source code, and source code in secret formats usable only by proprietary design programs is not really adequate. For a 3D model, the STL +href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_%28file_format%29">STL format is not the preferred format for changing the design and thus is not source code, so the repository should not accept it, except perhaps accompanying real source code.

@@ -442,10 +442,35 @@ manufacturer.

free. What we need is to recognize as a community that this is what we should do and to insist on free designs when we fabricate objects ourselves.

+
+ +

Footnotes

+
    +
  1. As used here, “digital hardware” includes +hardware with some analog circuits and components in addition to +digital ones.
    2. + +
  2. An article by Public Knowledge gives useful information +about this +complexity, for the US, though it falls into the common mistake of +using the bogus concept of “intellectual property” and the +propaganda term “protection.”
    3. +
+ + + +
-